What did I expect? He’s 13

Isaac says he doesn’t remember anything at all about his mother. He was only 4 when she died. His older sisters, Abigail and Esther, were well aware of the worry surrounding their mom’s illness.

Abigail assumed a huge amount of the oversight of her younger siblings.

She grew up fast.

Sometimes I think of Debbie, facing her own death and knowing she’d be leaving behind children of the tender ages of 12, 9 and 4. I never knew her, but I sometimes grieve to think of her own terrible loss, those three beautiful kids.

Isaac could not have imagined that the tall blonde his father found on the Internet would become his mom, his teacher, and the mother of his two baby brothers.

Jean and Brian had discussed home-schooling the kids and both favored it. When Brian was laid off in the dot.com days, private school was no longer affordable, so Jean became their schoolmarm. One child was in high school, one in middle school and the third in first grade.

When the honeymoon was over, home-schooling three kids began in earnest, and continues to this day with one. Jean is the schoolmarm and takes her role very seriously.

The eldest, Abigail, needed little of her time. On the rare occasion she had a question, Brian was available to lend a hand: Math was his field, after all. Depending on the subject, Esther, the second child, worked with little supervision. Subjects that were not grade-specific, such as Spanish, could be taught to two kids at a time.

I remember how thrilled Jean was to bring Isaac from no reading at all to voracious reader. You could almost see the wonder on his face as he began making sense out of all those squiggly lines on paper.

That passion for reading continues to the present. He’s visiting with us just now and I am so impressed with how hard he works. Much of what he does is by computer. I rearranged the old cherry table I write on and he uses my “big” computer while I work on my laptop. With minimal
effort I can see his screen and, when asked, can grab a dictionary and help find a stubborn definition.

I’m surprised at how much more I’m getting done. We sit here by the hour saying not a word to each other, stopping only to stretch or eat lunch.

One of several lunches, I guess I should say. Thirteen-year-old boys mostly eat, lunch and sleep. Unless they’re snacking and reading.

He’s a sweet lad, not that he’d like me to say that. I’ve known him for eight years now and I’ve never seen him angry or rebellious. Sullen, maybe, mopey, disappointed, but never openly angry. And he has been known to shade the truth just a little - but then, haven’t we all?

I told a friend that the boy arrived sans long-sleeved shirt, jacket, belt, and blue jeans, and she said, “What did you think he’d pack? After all, he’s a 13-year-old boy.”

Like that explains it all. He has improved in matters of personal hygiene since he was last here a couple of years ago. He takes two showers a week now instead of just one. Well, maybe just one. And he brushes his teeth occasionally.

“What did you expect?”

He gags and carries on when I feed him meatless sausage, but not before he’d eaten seconds. Does eat fruit as a snack, and yogurt. Actually, he eats nearly everything I put on the table since I learned not to fill the plate so the foods touched each other.

I know: “What did you expect?”

Isaac’s position in the family has taken a sea change over the past three years. The youngest of the family (and precious little boy) is into a whole new career: eldest of three boys. He is so patient and good with them, although he admits that now he likes Baby Uriah (9 months old) better than he does Samuel who is 3. Isaac is usually sent to change an odoriferous diaper and while he doesn’t mind doing so for the baby, he hates doing it for the toddler. I think he plans to stay in Peachtree City until word comes that Samuel is housebroken.

Life goes on. Two people on opposite ends of the North American continent found each other out of some 300 million others. Their life together has been a whirlwind, starting with a half-grown family and
now beginning from the beginning again.

Oh, meant to mention: Isaac’s dad called on the cell phone while we were camping at Lake West Point over the weekend. He put Abigail on the phone:

“How are you, Grandma? I’m fine. I have something to tell you. Jonathan proposed this afternoon. I’m engaged!”

Told Isaac the news next morning. He was grinning from ear to ear when I said, “You’re going to be a brother-in-law.” But when I said, teasingly, “Uncle I-saac? Uncle I-saac?” he says, “No, no, no, no, no -
I’m not changing any more diapers. And I don’t want to be a flower-boy in the wedding.”

What did I expect? He’s a 13-year-old boy.